Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Terrible Twos??

I'm in the midst of preparing Izzy for her first horse show. We're entered in three halter classes at a local open show. This means I've been jog/trotting, stopping, turning on the haunches and standing square - or at least attempting to. It also means Izzy needs a clip job. After all, you can't have a hairy horse amongst all the spit and polished beauties.

Izzy is such a sweetheart with a stellar disposition, that in my naivety I thought all of this would be no big deal. Well, according to Izzy it is a huge deal! She went bug eyed and freaked when the clippers were unveiled. And yes, I know how to do this nice and slow in tiny increments to introduce the tool without trauma. Except Izzy disagreed. Rather violently and in a way that's completely out of character for her. She wanted nothing to do with the silent clippers when they were two feet away from her.

She became a snorting, blowing, hopping, backing, fighting mess. It quite astonished me how she wanted nothing to do with anything. I couldn't even hold the torture device and pet her at the same time. She was that upset. Eventually, chanting my mantra of, "Patience, she's just a baby." we managed to get her long muzzle hairs trimmed. And stopped at that. Her bridlepath, and feet will have to wait.

I have to wonder if she's not coming into heat as she's been calling for the neighbor's horses. And am kind of hoping this hormonal time is causing my rock steady girl to act like a hot headed diva.

1 comment:

My Echo sometimes goes schitzy on me for no apparent reason and he's not a mare! Lately he is terrified of pool noodles! So I cut up some pieces of them starting with like 6 inch size and am rubbing him with it like a brush! It takes him forever to get over fears!